The Winds of Time
by Eriond
Summary: Janus is a young man, living in the floating city of Zeal, with his sister Schala. I can't really explain the plot in the summary...


The Winds of Time  
  
As the luminous rays of the morning sun streamed through the large window for the first time, the small ball in the middle of the bed in the corner of the room began to ever so slightly unfold. As the ball was under a blanket, you couldn't really tell at first glance that it was a small boy, with light blue hair. He closed his eyes tightly, trying to bring himself back down to the depths of unconsciousness. He curled his body into a tighter ball.  
  
"Janus! Get up!" yelled Schala from the kitchen.  
  
Janus groaned, but didn't do anything, other then lie there, attempting to stay in bed for as long as possible. Sure enough, several minutes later, Schala's voice pierced through the morning air.  
  
"Janus! If you don't get up now, I'm going to come in there and make you get up!"  
  
Janus groaned again. It was going to be one of those days. After pulling off the covers of his bed as slowly as possible, the fourteen year old began searching for his robe. He absent-mindedly opened the closet and instinctively reached towards the floor and pulled his robe up from the ground. He donned it, opened his door and stepped out into the kitchen. A young woman of about twenty, with light blue hair, elegantly done in a bundle on top of her head, who was wearing a pink robe was sitting at the table, a glass of dark red wine in her hand, giving Janus a look that was somewhere between annoyance and amusement.  
  
"Well, you're sure up early. What took so long?"  
  
Janus didn't even respond to his sister, or acknowledge her presence. Moving quickly over to the table, he reached out for the buns, which lay in a basket on the table. Groaning, Schala began sipping at her wine, and fingering the rim of the glass. Tearing the bread, Janus looked critically at Schala and said;  
  
"Isn't it a little early for that?"  
  
"It's never too early for this. I'm really tired, so I'm taking the day off." Schala replied.  
  
"You're taking the day off? Why can't I have the day off?"  
  
"Because you weren't up all night making mindblowingly long calculations for the queen! That's why! Just shut up, and go to school!" Schala practically screamed, before settling down and massaging her temples.  
  
Recoiling slightly, feeling somewhat hurt, Janus sat in silence, looking at the bread on his plate for several minutes, until Schala finally said;  
  
"Janus, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to lash out at you like that. It's just... everything has been so hectic over the past few weeks. The queen is changing. People might deny it, but I know it's happening. I feel it."  
  
Schala noticed that her glass was empty and calmly levitated an open bottle of wine off the counter and poured herself a glass.  
  
Janus still sat in silence, but began to eat his bread, and got himself a glass of water.  
  
"I just don't think you should start drinking like that," Janus said suddenly, "It's not going to get you away from your problem."  
  
"No," Schala agreed, moving her finger carefully along the edge of the exquisite crystal glass, "But it'll help me forget them for a time."  
  
Janus looked at his twenty-five year old sister, and sighed. He got up, and went into his room to grab an old leather bound book. After searching for several minutes, he removed the tome from underneath a pile a pile of papers, and then walked back to the kitchen.  
  
"I'm going now... I guess I'll see you later."  
  
Schala looked up from her glass and nodded, then went back to brooding over her wine.  
  
Janus turned to the door, and walked out into the sunshine, a looked onto the magnificent splendor, that was Zeal. Schala and Janus's house stood overlooking the marketplace, in the western section of the city. They were on the edge of Zeal itself, so close in fact that if you walked for a minute behind their house, you would walk off Zeal, and fall down to join the Earthbound. Janus walked down the long street, bracing himself against the severe gusts of wind that seemed to constantly blow across Zeal. Clutching his book tightly against his blue robe, he walked into the wind. His small stature helped somewhat, though not enough not to severely hamper his movement. After his long blue hair had flown in his face several times, he cursed himself for not asking Schala for some sort of charm to keep the wind off. This seemed to be a particularly bad day. Ducking occasionally into some of the stands that lined the street, Janus was able to get some brief respite from the wind. Moving slowly, but surely Janus walked towards his school. When Janus got to the center of Zeal, there were so many people around, that the wind was no problem. However, given Janus's small size, people seldom noticed him, so he had to duck in and out of the mass of robes, occasionally bumping into people and murmuring a quick apology. After about half an hour of moving through the tangle of robes, Janus finally reached the university of Zeal. Every center of learning was grouped into the giant university.  
  
Moving away from the section for higher learning, he moved down to his level of knowledge, and quickly entered a dome shaped building. It wasn't really much of a building. It was rather old, small, and the mortar in between the blocks of marble, which had been used to make it, was crumbling. Once inside, Janus looked over the assembled students. There were about ten of them, and they were all wearing the dark blue robes, which marked an apprentice. Sighing in relief, he noted that the Scholar, which taught the class, wasn't there yet. On several occasions, he hadn't quite gotten inside on time, and the sage which taught the class refused to give Janus some of his notes, or any sort of material which would allow him to catch up. Leaning against the wall, he stood apart from the rest of the students, as he never really had made any friends. As he stood alone, watching the other apprentices talking, he glanced at the book he carried. It was old and worn; the hard cover was softening and discolored. Janus put his hand on the book as if trying to feel it's age. He carefully opened the cover of the book. Looking at the small inscription in the center of the first page, he shuddered. Whenever Janus read the short paragraph, he felt the need to shudder. Something about the line didn't seem quite right to him.  
  
The three winds of magic blow across the world. Let them engulf Zeal forever and bring everlasting power.  
  
Idly leafing through the pages, he glanced briefly at several designs within the book, barely noticing the passing of time. Looking up briefly while skimming through the book, he saw Melchior. Staring with a kind of awe, his eyes followed the sage of life as he crossed the room moving up to the scholar's desk, as did the eyes of almost every single one of his classmates.  
  
Sitting down in the chair, he announced in a loud voice before bring out a tome which looked, "It's blatenly obvious that your normal teacher isn't here. I don't want to have to teach you idiots anything, so stand, sit or do whatever you want, just shut up."  
  
The silence in the room was profound and Janus looked stunned. This was the Sage of Life? For the next several minutes Janus just stared in amazement, along with most of the rest of his peers, not noticing the pages in his book, his hair and his clothing being blown around by a sudden gust of wind. After several minutes of startled silence, whispers broke out and after a few more minutes, the chatter that had dominated the room before the Sage's entrance reigned once more over the chamber. Janus looked back to his book. The wind had blown the pages back to the first page, with the inscription. Janus shivered and closed the book.  
  
Walking away from the university complex, Janus watched the sun as it moved further away from it's zenith, covering the sky in a pink hue. Janus moved quickly outside the walls, which marked the university campus. The marketplace was now actually navigable, it being almost dusk. Moving at a slow and measured pace, he walked away from the market, in the direction of his house. Twenty minutes into his walk, a severe gust of wind passed by Janus. There was something different about this wind though, it knocked Janus to his knees, giving him a feeling of frigidity unlike anything he had ever experience. As he fell, he screamed and wrapped his hands around his arms. Several people around him rushed toward him, immediately dropping to their knees themselves, asking Janus what was wrong. Janus didn't' answer them, and buried his head in his robes. He was so cold. Icy Daggers were stabbing at him all along his body. He was shivering uncontrollably, and could barely stay conscious. After five minutes of extreme pain, Janus blacked out.  
  
Janus was in a void, floating about aimlessly.  
  
The winds will not serve you, Time will bend you, Death will rend you, Force will transcend you.  
  
The words echoed over and over again in the vaults of Janus' mind. Frantically twisting every which way, Janus tried to see the speaker.  
  
The winds will not serve you, Time will bend you, Death will rend you, Force will transcend you.  
  
Trying to shut out the sound, Janus covered his ears, yet the words still echoed through.  
  
The winds will not serve you, Time will bend you, Death will rend you, Force will transcend you.  
  
After floating aimlessly for a period of time, which could have been hours or minutes, listening to the same call over and over again, Janus screamed out in frustration. At that same instant, Janus bolted upright from a bed, covered in sweat and breathing very fast. Janus lay back down for several minutes, trying to calm himself. Janus slowly turned his head and surveyed his surroundings. He was presumably in a ward at the medical center of Zeal. He could also. Out of the 10 beds in the ward he was currently in, there was only one other bed occupied. In the bed next to him, Schala lay with her eyes closed. It was only after he tried to struggle out of his bed, that he realized how weak he was. It took Janus about a minute just to prop himself up into a sitting position. He looked over at his sister. Her breaths were slow and measured. What was she doing here? Janus sat in silence for an indefinite amount of time, just staring at his sister, apprehension securely gripped around his heart. Realizing there was nothing he could do about it, he slowly lay back down on the bed, and tried to get some rest.  
  
"Hey, kid, are you awake?"  
  
Janus opened his eyes, and saw someone staring back at him from above his bed.  
  
"Yes, where am I?" Janus asked, though he already knew the answer.  
  
"You're in the medical center of Zeal. The time is around 10:30, and it's the 36th of Sumanthier." He moved over to Schala's bedside, "This is your sister, correct?"  
  
Janus sat up with some difficulty and looked over at Schala.  
  
"She is."  
  
The man stood there for several seconds, saying nothing.  
  
"Well, kid, I don't quite know how to break this to you, so I'll just get it out now, plain and simple. Your sister is in a coma. We're not sure if she'll ever wake up again."  
  
Janus felt like he had something in his throat.  
  
"W-w-what happened?" was the only thing he could say.  
  
"We don't quite know for sure, but it seems that something or someone, ripped your house to pieces."  
  
Janus was suddenly full of questions, and more scared then he had ever been in his life. Why would anyone want to kill him, or Schala?  
  
"Your sister was inside the house at the time," The man continued looking at a scroll, "She suffered third degres burns throughout most of her body, though we were able to regenerate most of the damaged tissue. The coma seems to be caused by some sort of magical trauma, though..."  
  
The man kept on talking, though Janus barely took in any of it. He just kept staring at Schala.  
  
The man finally noticed and stared straight at Janus.  
  
"It's hard to lose a sibling isn't it?"  
  
Janus nodded, and continued to stare at Schala.  
  
"Well, I might as well tell you about your own health before I leave you with her." The man began, once more unrolling the scroll he carried, "It seems that there is nothing physically wrong with you, but many witnesses say that you fell to your knees and were shivering like mad. You also seemed to be whispering some sort of poem."  
  
Janus continued to stare at Schala.  
  
"Since we can find nothing physically wrong with you, aside from having the energy drained out of you, and there seems to be nothing at all psychologically wrong with you at this point, we deem you to be in perfect health. However, since you are not of age, and you have no living relatives, we'll have to leave you with the orphanage of Zeal."  
  
Janus was still staring at Schala.  
  
"I've guess I've put too much on your mind already. You're scheduled to leave this center at," said the man, once again consulting his scroll, "10:00 tomorrow. For now, just try and get some rest."  
  
Janus nodded though continued to stare at Schala. It was his last sight before unconsiousness took him. 


End file.
